My life as a DBA..

[Flemming Didriksen]

I started working with databases in 2006. I jobrotated in my company and went from antivirus employee to dba employee with focus on our SQL Server and hopefully soon also DB2 on LUW. It was an old dream of mine, to return to the database world. I started in the company in 1996, working with Oracle 7.3. That was great until 1998 when the Oracle system and people developing on it, was "retired". I got a job in operations working with pc software, installation and support.

During the years in operations, one thought kept popping into my head. Who takes care of the SQL Servers. I think you all know the story. "Our new antivirus software needs a SQL Server database, the new application for publishing press pictures needs a SQL Server database, the licensemanagement software - the inventory/asset management software and a whole lot of other small applications needs a SQL Server database". So the guy installing the application, also installs a SQL Server database system on the same server.

And suddenly we have 30+ SQL Servers and all together they host 30 Gb of data. And no one is doing SQL backup(only complete server backup), no one is performance tuning, no one is taking care of the SQL database. Why should they, it works fine and totally hidden from the rest of the world.

In 2004 i suggested to my local management that we should place the daily care of theese SQL Servers with the DBAs taking care of mainframe DB and should management choose to do this, they were welcome to offer me the job in the DBA group. :-) Maybe they listened, anyhow i was offered the job. So in some sense, I created my own job. :-)

So now Im moving all these small databases from stand alone SQL 2000 servers to my lovely SQL Server 2005 cluster, containing 4 instances.

I look forward to chat and share with you guys about SQL Server. Im a newbie in many corners of the SQL Server product, but Im getting the hang of it.

Right now i can share this with you (if you didnt know it already ;-) ):
SQL Server on 64bit is so great. When you are tired of squeezing everything out of your 32 bit memory system, move to the 64 bit and feel how good it is to actually be able to breath again... :-)